After a decade of professional work in design I began to teach. I developed a creative research practice in photography, which led to a series of photographs around what was left behind—the remnant.

We have known for decades that the remnants of industrial production have been polluting our environment for years. Beginning in the early twenty first century we became increasingly aware that this cumulative waste was leading to the possible extinction of our species and that of other animals.

There is another, more formal and less fraught sense of remnant operative in photography. Photography can only record what is left behind—the remnant—prior to the instant of exposure. The activity of photographing becomes a way of reflecting on this condition, in the context of an increasing concern about the problem of future climate catastrophe.

My approach was quite different from that of the pinhole project. Rather than exploring indeterminacy for the production of new images, my work was an effort to conserve what had value amidst a culture of waste. What remained the same as before was the performative aspect of being-in-the-world, photographing. The attention to the set-up, framing and exposure was a way of honouring a world that we know we are losing in our pursuit of the human endeavour. A medium-format camera was placed on a tripod, with the exposure precisely determined by an external spot meter. I used black-and-white film, scanned the negatives, and printed on rag paper using carbon-based toner. The work was exhibited in 2008 as the series Remnants: Nature + Politics.